Drag boats return to Irvine Lake 28 years after tragic accident

Top Fuel Hydro racer Daryl Ehrlich pilots his boat across mph in 3.977 seconds at the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series on Sunday. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Race chaplain Craig Garland, right, says a prayer for Top Fuel Hydro racer Daryl Ehrlich before his heat in which he will reach speeds of over 200 mph in under four seconds at the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series at Irvine Lake on Sunday. Ehrlich's wife Tanya Ehrlich is second from right, and crew member Steve Rubideaux is at left. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

Top Fuel Hydro racer Daryl Ehrlich puts shin guards on before climbing into his drag boat, and piloting it to speeds of over 200 mph in under four seconds at the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series at Irvine Lake on Sunday. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Members of Top Fuel Hydro racer Daryl Ehrlich's team take apart and reassemble the boat's engine between heats at the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series at Irvine Lake on Sunday. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Spectators watch and some cover their ears in the pit area as the Top Fuel Hydro drag boat of Daryl Ehrlich is tested before his second heat. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Spectators enjoy the drag boat races at the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series on Sunday at Irvine Lake. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Bobby Laster puts his 2-year-old son, Parker Laster, on his lap to give him a better view of the drag boat races at Sunday's Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series at Irvine Lake. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Members of Top Fuel Hydro racing boat Toxic Rocket take a last look at the boat's computer before taking the boat to the water for a heat during the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series at Irvine Lake on Sunday. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Drag boat racer Randy Benson gets a bottle of water from his wife, Judy Benson, minutes before his boat, Texas Bounty Hunter H2O, is lowered into Irvine Lake for a heat on Sunday. The couple and their crew drove 22 hours from Mansfield, Texas, for the event. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Top Fuel Hydro racer Daryl Ehrlich puts his helmet on before climbing into his drag boat, and piloting it to speeds of over 200 mph in under four seconds at the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series at Irvine Lake on Sunday. ARMANDO BROWN, FOR THE REGISTER

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Drag boat racer Dan Rodgers had his boat disintegrate during a run. He escaped with a broken right ankle. He was alert and awake when taken away in an ambulance. His capsule is shown. LANDON HALL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The fast facts

•3.42 seconds: The time it took for Daryl Ehrlich to travel 1,000 feet, with a left-to-right wind blowing, to win the Top Fuel Hydro trophy at the inaugural California Classic at Irvine Lake on Sunday.

•260.23: Miles per hour that Ehrlich reached in the first of his three passes. It would have been a world record for a 1,000-foot course, except that under the rules he had to come close to that later in the competition, within 1 percent, to make it stand. He clocked 234.3 mph and 253.46 in the semis and the final, so his previous record of 258.64 mph stands.

SILVERADO -- Drag-boat racing roared back onto Irvine Lake on Sunday after 28 years away, giving Orange County fans record speeds while also displaying a heightened level of safety.

They also got a long look at the sport’s undisputed star: a 53-year-old Texan named Daryl Ehrlich, who drove his Top Fuel Hydro boat to a speed of 260.23 mph in his first pass of the day, then stood atop the hull wearing a cowboy hat and smoking a cigarette as his craft was towed to shore.

A long day of racing, interrupted by delays caused by too much wind on the lake, damaged timing sensors and even a flock of birds, came to a climax at 6:45 p.m., just as the sun was thinking about setting on the inaugural California Classic. Ehrlich’s white boat, named "Problem Child,” tore across the flat water and easily beat his rival, Bryan Sanders, piloting the red boat dubbed “Tequila Sunrise.”

The cloudy sky was so dark, you could see the flames pouring from the headers of the vehicles’ deafening 8,000-horsepower V-8 engines. There are 16 of the chrome pipes on each boat, and they call that fireworks display “16 candles.”

“This is why we’re here!” Ehrlich said afterward, adding that the approaching darkness had made the blue lane buoys nearly invisible. “It’s amazing what your brain can absorb when the world’s going by so fast.”

Thousands of people turned out on a sweatshirt-recommended day, many of them families clustered under canopies or in RVs. Although plenty of beer was sold, and some people appeared to have overindulged on a Sunday afternoon, there was none of the rowdiness that had come to epitomize the event decades ago.

There was also nothing approaching the tragedy that occurred the last time the race was held on Irvine Lake, on April 21, 1985. On that day, a boat went out of control and went up on the beach, killing a 9-year-old girl from Burbank, Brandy Branchflower. In the two previous events on the lake, drivers also died in accidents.

The Irvine Co., which owns the land surrounding the lake, banned the U.S. governing body of the sport, the U.S. Drag Boat Association, from holding any further events there.

The sport consolidated and, in 2009, was helped immeasurably when Tucker Lucas, founder of the Corona-based Lucas Oil, lent his company’s name and resources to form the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing Series.

Series Director Ken Dollar said the series was able to convince Irvine Co. board members and local authorities that “today it’s not the same as it was back in 1985, and they gave us a chance to come back and prove it.”

“Safety’s the biggest thing,” Dollar added. “Back in 1985, it was just a bunch of cowboys out racing their fast boats. But if we were gonna become a true mainstream motorsport, we had to start addressing a lot of the safety issues, not only competitor but spectator.”

Courses at Lucas Series events are away from crowds, who are kept behind plastic-pennant fences. As for the drivers, technology has made them safer as well. They use the HANS (head and neck support) restraint system, and Top Fuel Hydro races are now 1,000 feet long down the watery “track,” instead of the old quarter-mile, 1,320 feet. In his winning race, Ehrlich covered the shorter distance in 3.42 seconds.

“Daryl’s been 265 mph in the quarter-mile, and we were approaching 270, and I think they decided it’s time to slow us down a little bit,” said Eddie Knox, who as the owner of Palm Springs-based Eddie Knox Racing is Ehrlich’s employer.

Knox hired him away from a rival racing team when the series began. Ehrlich won the Top Fuel title in 2011 and 2012, and would have won in the series’ first year, 2010, if he hadn’t gotten into a crash in San Angelo, Texas, that year. He had surgery for compressed vertebrae but returned to the wheel four months later.

“When they put those titanium rods in, it’s like a rat trap. It gives you your spring back,” Ehrlich, who’s from Round Rock, Texas, said with a raspy laugh. “Plus, I’m a half-inch taller (now 5-foot-7½), so six more wrecks I may be 6 feet tall eventually!”

The crowd hushed when driver Dan Rogers – “Dangerous Dan” it says on his boat – started to wobble during his race in the Alcohol Flat division. The boat hit a lip of water and just disintegrated. But he stayed inside the “capsule” that flew free of the boat. He suffered only a broken right ankle, and was awake and clutching the arms of his family members as he was whisked away in an ambulance.

As Ehrlich sat in his boat, his trailer backing him into the water on the entrance ramp before his final race, he held the hand of race-series chaplain Craig Garland, who said a prayer in the ear of Ehrlich’s helmet. Ehrlich’s wife Tanya said what she says to him before every race: Go have fun.

“That’s the happiest he ever is, right there inside that capsule,” she said as his boat went into the water. “That’s his calm, peaceful place.”

Asked what it feels like to travel 260 mph across water, Ehrlich said:

"I wouldn’t have a clue. I close my eyes and scream like a little girl the whole time. You know, the sensation of speed is really not as great as the sensation of acceleration. That's the thing. This thing makes five Gs when I stab it. I mean, it's amazing. That's what you feel all the way to the end. You know it's going fast if it still puts you in the seat all the way to the finish line."

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